The alarming news these past several weeks has awakened Americans to the inhumanity lurking in our nation; legal aborting of a baby at the point of being delivered and, in some cases, after delivery. Aborting at any stage is abhorrent to tens of millions, but to do so at the point of birth is beyond moral comprehension.

This is not only a celebrated and accepted law just passed in New York but also one recently contemplated in Virginia, where its Governor, a pediatric surgeon, expressed public support for post-birth abortion. And, I guess other states will soon follow suit.

Perhaps what makes this law so hard to come to grips with is the fact that it is decidedly un-American. It isn’t politics that determine how Americans feel about children, seniors, pets and the down trodden of our society. It’s like moms and apple pie…we just love them in our hearts.

I watch TV commercials nightly requesting donations to save dogs, cats and other animals. The same is true for requests for children’s hospitals and even for funds to help Israeli holocaust survivors.

All of them receive ample funding because Americans are generous to a fault. We are taught from a very young age to give to the poor, be kind to animals and to the old. But are we taught that we should kill off our young when birth is “inconvenient”?

Abortion has been a common procedure probably since Adam and Eve. But, never has it been a celebrated occurrence. Never have we used abortion as a form of family planning as many Americans now do. In fact, they are no longer even called abortion clinics; they are family planning clinics. Young people are being taught that actions do not have to have consequences…everything can be taken care of.

In 1973 the Supreme Court ruled that abortion is legal. The Court did not say abortion is something that one should aspire to. The decision to do so should have a bit more thought going into it than, say, a decision to visit a dentist.

Studies show that from 1970, and through the next 49 years, more than 45 million babies were aborted in the U.S.

Now, more than 1.3 million abortions are carried out per year, based on studies in the U.S. alone. Another unbelievable fact is that 45% of them will be requested by a woman who has had more than one. And, 54% of these women will have been on birth control when they become pregnant. This is exacerbated by the fact that these 1.3 million abortions were the cumulative result of 2.6 million unintended pregnancies – half of them!

I maybe old fashioned, but how in the world could we, in this age of birth control and preventative education, have 2.6 million unintended pregnancies? Please don’t tell me it is simply because poor people can’t afford the pill. Abortions run the gamut of the the social strata — from the very poor to the very rich. I think it is just such an accepted practice that we have become hardened to the fact that we are killing children.

Our society does not seem to care that we are destroying our young. Yes, we are heart broken to see young children at the southern border who have been dragged 1,000 or more miles, and used as cannon fodder to get drug and human traffickers across that border. And yes, we are heart broken to see young children in war zones around the world, wounded and starving because of man’s inhumanity toward man. But if death takes place in a sterile, stainless steel, windowless hospital room it is just a normal health care procedure. No big deal.

I started this by mentioning that Virginia politicians wished to follow New York in adopting this archaic law. I listened to Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, who is a doctor, in a radio interview (replayed on national TV) describe how you commit infanticide as if he was describing how to avoid getting a blister on your finger. This sad discussion was of no concern to the person giving the interview. Her agitation was over a 40-years-old yearbook where in he had been photographed costumed in black face, or a KKK hood (no one knows which was Northam). The entire Democrat state caucus demanded his resignation, but no concern was addressed toward a proposed law that would allow the murder of an innocent baby.

Experts say one-third of American women will abort at least once by age 45.

Experts also tell us that 49% of all U.S. women are pro-choice, and 45% are pro-life so politics aren’t going to change, even as much as nervous pundits fear they will.

The change, if there is to be one, must come from parents educating their young, not destroying them. It must come from teaching that life is a journey of choices that result in consequences, not a trip to Disneyland. And it must come from both sides of our political arena. What we currently do, as if our God and the world isn’t watching, is a thing we should all be ashamed of, not a trend to celebrate!

History tells us that the Romans dipped Christian babies in tar, and on the head of their spears, lit them up to provide vision for their night games in the coliseum. We are much more sophisticated today. But the Romans at least could rationalize some benefit of their murders – light. We, in civilized society, pay billions of dollars each year to snuff out our babies’ light.

Will we add abortions to our annual celebrations? Don’t we usually lift up those memorable moments that cause celebrations? Coming soon, Happy Mother’s Day, Happy Father’s Day and now in, New York, and, perhaps in your home town, Happy Abortion Day.

A well-financed activist group intends to counter the North Carolina treasurer’s plan to reduce health care costs accrued by state employees, active and retired, by pushing an alternative plan that encourages citizens to adopt healthier lifestyles. (Insert laugh track here).

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the Left’s playbook: Demand more spending to ensure better outcomes, which, eventually, will pay for themselves (except they never do). Any competing effort to reduce health care costs is dismissed as yet another heartless, “push Granny over the cliff” scheme.

In fact, radio spots paid for by Partners for Innovation in Health Care make three references to State Treasurer Dale Folwell’s “risky scheme” to trim spending by up to $400 million annually. The spots rely on semantic nuances that make their claims sound perfectly logical, if not reasonable, such as “ration care”, “jeopardize quality”, and “cripple operations”. These evoke memories of the deceitful claim by then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in 2017 that “hundreds of thousands of people will die” if ObamaCare was ever repealed. Who could possibly support rationing, jeopardizing, crippling or genocide?

Folwell is on record repeatedly saying that spending on state employees’ healthcare continues to rise, that providers such as UNC Health Care rebuke his efforts to examine actual costs, and that the snowballing effect is unsustainable. Folwell has emphasized his concern about North Carolina’s promise to provide more than $30 billion in health care coverage for retired state employees, of which less than 5% has been set aside, reported Business North Carolina in a Jan. 25 overview of growing opposition to Folwell.

Partners for Innovation is enlisting donors to help it spread its message that healthcare costs are not negotiable. It plans to raise $2.5 million toward that goal in coming years. Democrats in the General Assembly are floating plans to limit the treasurer’s ability to control health care costs.

The Socialist Left despises big corporations, but embraces government largesse and big healthcare with arms wide open. Rather than answering Folwell’s question — “I know what you are charging (the state) but how much am I supposed to pay you?” — Democrats and their activist supporters in the health care industry want to direct even more funds toward insane initiatives to coerce individual state employees to take better care of themselves.

Radio spots contend the treasurer disregards the dire need for a state health plan that will “provide (preventative) services”. Without these services, activists will not be able to encourage (force) state employees and retirees to manage their own chronic diseases, stop smoking, lose weight and adopt “active lifestyle solutions”.

Polarization in politics increasingly leaves responsible citizens with choices so blatantly absurd that only Democrats view them as black and white. The state’s first Republican treasurer in 142 years is determined to demand accountability by health care giants for the services they provide. What a monster, this Folwell!

His opposition sees more spending on coercion as the only option. Guard fast food drive-throughs with Dietician Police. Shutter ABC liquor stores. Deliver treadmills to every home. Ban smoking in the workplace. (Oops, already tried that. Didn’t stop smokers from smoking elsewhere). Make all restaurant parking remote but without shuttles. Finally, an “active lifestyle solution” if ever there was one.

The only consolation for donors to Partners for Innovation in Health Care pushing for more, not smarter, spending, is this: Their ideas are positively benign compared to their progressive brethren on Capitol Hill, who have unveiled the Green New Deal. This proposal does not merely seek to alter lifestyles, but life as we know it. No air travel tops the list. Elimination of fossil fuels, of course. And it goes on, all to be achieved in 10 years at a projected cost of $6.6 trillion annually.

Writing in February 11 editions of The Wall Street Journal, Barton Swaim observes that the Green New Deal “is an expression of dreams, but that doesn’t make it pointless or merely comical.” Economic freedom for individuals is not the aim of progressives. Whether here in North Carolina or in The Swamp, unchecked economic control and collectivism are their guiding principles. Swaim quotes the haunting, timeless words of political philosopher Michael Oakeshott, who warned that “the conjunction of dreaming and ruling generates tyranny.”

Then, there is this to ponder when next the anti-Folwell spots air. Oakeshott instructed that the political dream “is a vision of a condition of human circumstance from which the occasion of conflict has been removed, a vision of human activity coordinated and set going in a single direction and of every resource being used to the full.”

Trump Derangement Syndrome came to the fore in 2016 when angry marchers screamed at the sky, when so-called comedian Kathy Griffin depicted a decapitated Donald Trump, and when so-called entertainer Madonna publicly acknowledged her inclination to blow up The White House.

But now, two years in, what was formerly laughable is devolving into a degree of contempt for the President of the United States, for Republicans, for American values, for Constitutional principles and, most sadly, for Christianity few have witnessed in their lifetimes.

It is spreading, it is vile. The mainstream media fans its flames, daily. Democrats, now openly and willfully embracing Socialism as the foundation of a soon-to-be remade America, are deliberately wreaking havoc, sewing seeds of chaos and resisting all calls for civility. They relished the partial federal government shutdown. They cheer on a growing crisis at the Southern border still. They want only to stop Trump and Republicans from delivering on pledges to get serious about border security. Desperate asylum seekers are mere pawns, not unlike federal employees working without pay. So what? You’ll thank us someday, you saps.

Hatred is more alarming than delusion, more dangerous than derangement, more corrosive than disillusion. And it’s everywhere.

Rush Limbaugh: “They have become poisoned by a loathing hatred for us. … This is unchecked, unabated hatred. … Folks, that’s who these people are, and one of the reasons they exist today is that we have never stood up to oppose them. Well, we have. The Republican Party has not stood up.”

In 2019, a KY high schooler is ridiculed as a “punchable face” for wearing a MAGA cap.

The Left in 2019 tells themselves they are acting to save the country. They are the patriots. They must hijack journalism, as television host and Trump hater Joy Behar said on the air, because “we’re desperate to get Trump out of office,” even if that means shamefully distorting events surrounding the March for Life in Washington, and smearing the Catholic high school students who wandered into a firestorm afterwards. The left seems to believe that it will prevail only by laying bare its deepest held disgust for God and country, decency and tolerance. The self-proclaimed party of tolerance of transgenderism, gender neutrality, illegal immigrants committing crime and acts of murder, endless abortions and organ harvesting, has no tolerance for the millions who duly elected President Trump and other duly elected Republicans. None.

Writing for New York magazine (Jan. 25, 2019), Conservative author Andrew Sullivan decries “the abyss of hate versus hate” in a piece bearing the same headline. Sullivan watched all of the available video of the March for Life, where Native Americans beat drums and Black Israelites shouted anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-white smears. More appalling than these groups and their unprovoked confrontations with the Kentucky kids, Sullivan concludes, was the media’s inclination to twist the narrative, write about it breathlessly as “white privilege” run amuck and, then, defend it unapologetically after video analysis debunked virtually everything that was initially reported.

“There’s a reason why, in the crucial battle for the legitimacy of a free press,” Sullivan writes, “Trump is still on the offensive. Our mainstream press has been poisoned by tribalism. My own trust in it is eroding. I’m far from the only one.”

And what was the reaction to Sullivan’s conclusions? A hate-spewing George Mason University law professor who, as of this moment, still has his job, defied facts on the ground as irrelevant.

“These were wealthy, privileged, white teenagers in MAGA hats marching against abortion. That is plenty of reason to want to skullf— all of them until there is nothing left but giblets and red jelly. I don’t hate them for smirking and (peacefully!) protesting against people they disagree with, and I don’t hate them for (what) they did necessarily, I hate them for what they are and what they represent. F— these kids for their politics, f— them for their Catholicism and their kkkuntserveatism, and their hateful hats. You shouldn’t need a video of some s—heel with a punchable face to know that.”

You can dismiss this demented individual as just that, but we must not forget that he is interacting with young people every day, and that George Mason is collecting tuition in order to pay Prof. David Bernstein. Perhaps he should be designated a non-essential employee.

But the threat to our democracy is not limited to rogue academics. Americans are electing people of this mindset to govern in the corridors of the U.S. Capitol. This has come to the attention of economic and cultural commentator Ben Stein, who denounces the blatantly Socialist positions espoused by the media’s newest political darling, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), recently sworn-in to her first term at age 29. She is an avowed Socialist who, even as Venezuela crumbles, advocates for a 70% marginal income tax rate for America’s highest earners, free public college, the abolishment of border and immigration control, and Medicare for all.

Stein went on Fox Business to challenge the Socialist tide. He was skewered for referencing historical truths, that “there are an awful lot of people (emphasis, ours, on awful) who have no idea that Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung all came to power promising the same kinds of things that (AOC) is promising. … These promises are old promises and they invariably lead to bad things.”

Meanwhile, do not hold your breath waiting for re-empowered House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to rein in Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. AOC is, not unlike government employees and would-be immigrants, a useful idiot.

Should any intelligent, proud American be shocked or dismayed by the staggering number of (left wing) politicians, and their disengaged constituents, feigning compassion for children of illegal immigrants while expressing disdain for U.S. border security? Our mutual security.

Not in an age when the recent former editor of The Wall Street Journal, no less, writes that radical socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is “one of the most important political figures of our age” while he questions “capitalism’s limitations in answering deeper human needs.” Will Gerard Baker, now Editor at Large, soon entertain an offer from The New York Times? He certainly seems to be auditioning.

Not in an age when Gillette, decades long maker of men’s grooming products, launches a campaign likely to enrage many of its customers across multiple generations. The campaign boils down to, “Buy our razors but, please, stop being masculine, male and a societal toxin.” It’s a safe bet that the best a man can get for shaving soon will be another brand, any other brand. Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, might be forced to rename Gillette Stadium, perhaps inking a naming rights deal with #MeToo.

Admittedly, these are trivial examples in contrast to the real world tragedies imposed by illegals pouring across our southern border. But the mainstream, drive-by, anti-Donald Trump media, appendages of the “new” Democratic Party, are far more invested in decrying “income inequality” or “toxic masculinity” than reporting on a 14-year-old girl forced to work as a prostitute.

It happened just outside of Washington, D.C. The ABC television affiliate (WJLA) reported it, but not Associated Press, not The Washington Post, not The Washington Times, and other local TV stations. Many digital outlets picked up on the WJLA report, including The Western Journal:

Felix Silva-Zuniga is an alleged associate of the MS-13 gang who was in this country illegally, according to WJLA-TV. He’s accused of paying a gang leader $100 for access to a 14-year-old girl, raping her, and secretly recording the encounter to blackmail the teen into providing more sex.

Silva-Zuniga, 52, is a native Honduran. Before she was raped, the girl had been trafficked to the D.C. area, where she was forced to work as a cocktail waitress during drug deals.

Meanwhile, out on Long Island in New York the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has tied a legal loophole that is exploited at the southern border to the recent beating of a Huntington, N.Y., teenager by MS-13 thugs. DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman explains what happened:

Two of the suspects entered into the country illegally through the unaccompanied alien child loophole in the Rio Grande Valley. … Not only are the alleged assailants MS-13 gang members, but they entered the country illegally as unaccompanied alien children from the Northern Triangle. The Trafficking Victims Protections Reauthorization Act incentivizes unaccompanied alien children to enter the country illegally with little to no chance of ever being removed.

Democrats need to drag Hillary Clinton away from her Chardonnay barrels and make her their anti-border security spokesperson. She could dust off one of her all-timers: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

That, sadly, seems to be the prevailing Democrat illogic. We do not need to close loopholes; we need to open our arms to the “children” (but only the ones CNN camera crews discover). We do not need border security; we need to secure a pathway to citizenship for so-called Dreamers. We do not need a wall or barriers because that is so unenlightened, so 2013, so Trumpian.

If there must be, now and then, collateral damage such as 14-year-olds threatened and raped, so be it. If there must be federal employees denied pay, so be it. What difference does it make?

Peggy Noonan, in a year-end column for The Wall Street Journal, asks “Trump insiders” to speak candidly about how the administration conducts the people’s business. Two years are indeed enough time to evaluate the conduct of our government—including the duplicity in Congress and the vigilante style of the Justice Department and the IRS. Yet Ms. Noonan focuses her ire on President Donald Trump while overlooking these and other malefactors.

When the press stretches facts about events on Capitol Hill and in the bureaucracy, when the Justice Department decides to obfuscate facts and ignore subpoenas, when we learn that Congress has a secret slush fund to silence sexual-harassment accusers, these scandals often are made public by Trump insiders willing to speak honestly about what Americans have long suspected.

Gen. James Mattis

When Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned his post, we heard his message. The former general is in the fight to win, as is expected of a fine career officer. Yet others in the administration argue candidly that it is futile to fight a war for 18 years without rules of engagement sufficient to defeat our enemy. Experience tells us that peace does not come through empty promises and plane loads of cash.

There are indeed many books about the chaos in the Trump administration. But there also are many others authored by supporters of the president, willing to put their reputations on the line in defense of the president’s accomplishments and his right to govern.

Ms. Noonan suggests that honest Trump insiders are cowed by the president’s operatives, becoming “figures of “obloquy.” I am not a Trump insider but I am not afraid to speak up on the president’s behalf. I voted for him to expose the inner sanctum we call our government and shed light on the corruption we all know exists. He has persevered to the point of friction and beyond, and that is where true leaders go.

Originally published as a letter-to-the-editor in The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 2019

The walls are closing in on Donald Trump, pundits and politicians now agree. Michael Cohen has turned on him. What else does he know? There is no proof of Russian collusion, but campaign finance violations will do the job. Robert Mueller is taking no prisoners. James Comey brags that he “got away” with FBI agents grilling General Michael Flynn without counsel present, thrilled to ruin a patriot who joined Trump’s orbit. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer wag their disapproving fingers at Trump with cameras rolling in the Oval Office because, well, he’s an unworthy President.

And, yet …

WASHINGTON (Reuters): The number of Americans filing applications for jobless benefits tumbled to near a 49-year low (in early December), which could ease concerns about a slowdown in the labor market and economy.

Democrats/Media: Trump and the Republicans must be stopped.

The Wall Street Journal: State and local government investment in roads, bridges, buildings and other infrastructure hasn’t returned to its previous peak, but it is now showing signs—late in the expansion—of a real recovery. Bigger state and local tax collections, propelled in part by an acceleration in sales-tax receipts from consumer spending, is boosting capital projects and driving a municipal borrowing boom.

Democrats/Media: Trump and the Republicans must be stopped.

Breitbart: In October, imports used in computer manufacturing amounted to over $40 billion. That represents a savings of about $640 million over what they would have paid for those products a year earlier – more than half of the additional tariff payments. A big part of the tariffs are actually being paid by foreign manufacturers who now receive fewer dollars for their goods. People who think they have a better understanding of trade than the president like to mock Trump for saying that China and others pay tariffs but evidence suggests Trump has it right.

Democrats/Media: Trump and the Republicans must be stopped.

The Daily Caller: U.S. oil production hit 11.7 million barrels a day during the week ending Nov. 16. That’s unchanged from the previous week, but up significantly from the week ending Nov. 9. Oil companies are pulling more than 2 million barrels more out of the ground now than during the same time period in 2017, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. That’s a 21-percent increase in oil production in the past year.

Democrats/Media: Trump and the Republicans must be stopped.

Rush Limbaugh: “I feel duty-bound to warn you and to give you a heads-up about what we’re gonna face. Donald Trump’s gonna have perhaps the most embattled presidency in — well, certainly in our lifetimes, and I dare say maybe in modern American history. They’re not going to quit and they are a new kind of stupid. They are not logical. They make no sense whatsoever. But they are going to have the media on their side, and that’s the danger.”

Rush uttered these words Nov. 22, 2016. Sadly, he was deadly accurate. But there is solace to be found in knowing that Donald Trump never quits.

Bladen County has a checkered history as a vote fraud hotbed in North Carolina. Democrats have complained about it for nearly a decade because they rarely win in the 9th District, which includes Bladen. But at least one Republican acknowledges a similar trend.

“Over that period of time authorities have failed to get to the bottom of that problem,” State Senator Dan Bishop said during a recent news conference covered by Carolina Journal. “The problem is not being solved by prosecutorial authority so far, and certainly not by the state board of elections over three administrations” spanning Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue, Republican Pat McCrory, and sitting Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

For now, the final count in the race for the U.S. House seat in the 9th finds Republican Mark Harris, a Baptist pastor, holding a 905-vote lead on Democrat Dan McCready, but the state refuses to certify the result because a few volunteers came forward with stories of absentee ballot mishandling. Harris could use some divine intervention about now.

The alleged perpetrator is a Bladen County political activist, an otherwise obscure soil and water conservation supervisor and convicted felon, Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr., who has worked in at least five campaigns since 2010, The Washington Post reports.

National media outlets have been paying attention, presumably because they salivate at the possibility that another reliably Republican House seat will flip to a Democrat. The right-leaning The Wall Street Journal editorial board has taken notice of the drama in western North Carolina, even while scolding “Democrats (who often) insist that vote fraud is a myth”:

“Forty percent of the mail-in ballots for Bladen County were never returned, and it was 62% for neighboring Robeson County. That compares with 24% district-wide. So one suspicion is that Mr. Dowless could have perhaps destroyed hundreds of Democratic ballots.”

The word “perhaps” hangs over the resulting count because, ultimately, investigators have only the claims of volunteer absentee-ballot collectors recruited by Dowless — and voters who say their ballots were handed over to these collectors — as evidence of fraud. Unlike Broward County, Fla., mysterious boxes of ballots, mailed in or cast on election day, have yet to materialize in Bladen or Robeson.

The WSJ’s editorial did not conclude that fraud occurred in NC’s 9th. But it rightly shed light on the perils of making fraud easier than it should be.

“One lesson from this mess is the folly of pushing to expand ballot access without regard for ballot integrity. North Carolina implemented ‘no excuse’ early voting in 2000, which was expanded in 2002 to mail-in ballots. Previously, a voter had to demonstrate he was sick or would be out of town.”

The point is well taken and should be reviewed thoroughly by the state’s election officials, especially given North Carolina’s growing national reputation as the home of election chaos. And if you think court ordered re-districting wreaked havoc this election cycle, TheHill.com reports there looms a daunting worst-case scenario if the state decides a new election between Harris and McCready in the 9th is not necessary.

Observes TheHill.com: “The U.S. House of Representatives, which has the ultimate authority over congressional elections, can also call for a special election, which would trigger a new filing process, to be followed by a primary and general election (our emphasis added).”

If this happens, not only will Mark Harris be missing as the elected representative of his district on Capitol Hill, our state will have no elected representative in the halls of Congress for the foreseeable future.